On 6/6/2023 at 11:40 AM, BIGJRA said:
1. The biggest reason why navigation and puzzles are unclear is that I have been a bit more hesitant with pictures than I should be. The only way I know right now to get full map images is to splice together a bunch of RPG Maker Screenshots which sounds like a pain, but I've really come around to seeing how doing that would be infinitely more helpful than blocks of unclear text.
I would say you don't need to do this for every zone (and that's a lot of work that isn't very fun). But for every time you use "backtrack to X", you should probably include a screenshot of the location, so when players are navigating back to where they should be going, they aren't wondering "am I in the right spot?"
Many levels don't really need pictures, because they're fairly linear and the instructions are pretty clear (good job), but for maps with a lot of branches it can be a nightmare to navigate. Zones like the Rhidocrine Jungle, Sugiline Cave, Victory Road, and the Waterfall hopping in the mountains are painful even with very clear instructions, simply because "go out the top" or "go up the waterfall" could be ambiguous when said route or waterfall is behind two bends and you can't be sure if reached the aforementioned point. And for very involved dungeons, it's probably better to use bullets or an ordered list so you don't get lost in all of the lefts and rights.
On 6/6/2023 at 11:40 AM, BIGJRA said:
2. Another thing is that, in your criticisms and in some others I've seen, the postgame puzzle solutions suffer especially. Ame and team really hit their stride with massive maps and complicated puzzles during the postgame, while I was really just itching to
I definitely agree. I think I noticed it too when transitioning to E19 that the guide seems to be a little less familiar with the zones. For instance, Amaria's gym is a maze, but just following the guide step-by-step didn't give me too much trouble. But on the other hand, Victory Road frustrated me to the point where I just started poking around it by myself, because there's only so many "go into the cart" or "cross the track here" (especially since by doing so you get put into a new part of the map) before I get turned around and decide that following a guide is more trouble than just bumping into stuff and seeing if it works.
Part of it is the nature of level design in Reborn. I've criticized it (mostly affectionately) as challenge by inconvenience. There's so many levels where the next step isright therebut instead of being able to reach it, you have to loop all the way around. It's super frustrating to do, and I imagine it's much worse to write.
On 6/6/2023 at 11:40 AM, BIGJRA said:
3. I can't really shake my biases as a player - I played E18 like 8 times before E19 came out so I have definitely moved away from the "first-time player" lens. I'm trying to take feedback on this one best as possible to account for this and really focus on pretending like I know nothing as a reader and seeing if I'm confused or not.
I think it's less about trying to view it from the lens of a new player and more about stating things even if they seem obvious to you. We have a natural tendency to not want to come across as too condescending, so we don't try to assume the audience is an idiot. But if you're writing a guide, you have to assume that you're (often considerably) more knowledgeable about the game than the person reading it.
For me, I also played the game a few times (though not approaching 8), so it was more about getting the 100% completion. There was also a couple of times where I probably could have gone through, but I wanted to make sure to get all the optional items and easter eggs. And a lot of times where I wanted to just use debug to walk through walls, but that's probably more a problem with Reborn's level design.
Your expertise is why we even bother to read the guide, so you shouldn't try to change your perspective as much as share as much as you can. Saying too much, for instance, is better than not saying enough.
Overall though, I understand the difficulty. I can't imagine how much time you've put into getting the guide to the level it's at, and it's absolutely on par with any video walkthrough on the internet. There's probably just a few tweaks here and there before I can comfortably say it's the best written guide I've ever seen.
